


Turn of the Die

by 0dderty



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Homestuck, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:42:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23654056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0dderty/pseuds/0dderty
Summary: Days before the end of the world, Vriska Serket reaches out to an old... friend. Things don't go as planned.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Turn of the Die

**Author's Note:**

> A sliiiiiiiightly late 4/13 gift, based off a fever dream I had around christmas that has haunted my dreams ever since. Hopefully by finishing this story I've purged my spirit of its demons, and I can finally know peace.

The seas out from Dirtoonen are deeply polluted, courtesy of the massive labyrinthian factories just off the region’s coastline. There is where nearly all the mass production on this side of the planet happens, and true to this fact it doesn’t seem to actually end. A ship sails freely some nautical miles out, and even from its distance the towers still loomed high. An interwoven microstate of pipes and tubes and gears turn day and night to churn out endless amounts of garbage to some greedy lowblooded fuckface’s door. Around here, the fumes nearly block out the moons, casting a grey dimness over the Alternian night. A lesserblood could choke to death on them. To that par, on this ship in question, its crew dons what some nerdball weenie in some distant and as of yet unborn universe might call a pollution mask, though these trolls obviously know well enough to call a Breathingnet a Breathing net. The ship’s captain, of course, does not. The cobalt blood that churns just underneath her gray skin grants her a certain tolerance to the toxins, though she can’t deny it smells absolutely hideous. She looks out on the waters, where a small party is slowly making their way back on a dinghy. Took them long enough.

_Bzzzt! Bzzzzt!_

From the front deck she can hear the slight buzzing of a few new notifications from her husktop.

caligulasAquarium [CA]  began trolling arachnidsGrip [AC]

CA: wwell miss mindfang it seems wwe meet again

CA: on kinda short notice too i wwas just about to pull out of this campaign

CA: but if youre gonna throww out the line id be an idiot to not take the bait

CA: that metaphor wwas a little undercooked but wwhatevver

CA: point is mindfang, ol dualscar’s back in towwn, and hes not gonna pass up this hot opportunity to rub one last one in on the itsy bitsy spider

CA: so you get your tush settled

CA: and you settle it good

CA: because wwhen i get dowwn there

_Ugh, lame._ She really could not give less of a shit about what this particular blowhole has to say at any particular moment. 

gallowsCalibrator [GC]  began trolling  arachnidsGrip [AC]

GC: VR1SK4 1 C4NNOT B3L13V3 YOUR3 DO1NG TH1S R1GHT NOW

GC: W3 L1T3R4LLY H4V3 4 G4M3 TO PL4Y TOMORROW 4ND YOUR3 ST4RT1NG 4 C4MP41GN?

GC: 1 THOUGHT TH4T M4YB3 PL4Y1NG TOG3TH3R 4G41N FOR TH3 F1RST T1M3 1N FOR3V3R WOULD B3 3NOUGH OF 4 MOT1V4T1ON FOR YOU TO DO NOT DO 4NYTH1NG STUP1D

GC: BUT ONC3 4G41N 1 H4V3 UND3R3ST1M4T3D VR1SK4 S3RK3TS T3N4C1TY FOR ST4BB1NG H3RS3LF 1N TH3 FOOT R3P34T3DLY OV3R 4ND OV3R 4G41N

GC: H4V3 FUN DY1NG OF BLOODLOSS 1D1OT

GC: S3R1OUSLY WH3R3 4R3 YOU R1GHT NOW

GC: PL34S3 DONT T3LL M3 YOUR3 CH4S1NG TH4T W31RD GUY 4G41N

GC: VR1SK4 4R3 YOU 3V3N R34D1NG TH3S3 M3SS4G3S

GC: 1F YOU DONT R3SPOND 1M GO1NG TO COM3 G3T YOU 1M NOT L3TT1NG YOU SCR3W TH1S UP FOR US

GC: VR1SK4?

GC: >:[

The captain closes out the chat. She is so over this drama right now. Besides, it’s not like she intends to stick around forever. She’s in this game for one purpose, and once purpose alone. 

“Hæve, HO! Hæve, HO!” resound some of her crewmates from not far off now. And it looks like she just found it. Or, more accurately, found him.

It is the eleventh bilunar perigree of the sixth dark season’s equinox and Vriska Serket has finally captured Nagito Komeda. 

Tracking his location was a near nightmare. He had no hive to speak of, which was unthinkable for Alternian culture. To be honest, she had just gone out on a wild rumor that he was hiding out around the Dirtoonen factories. She gathered up some of Spidermom’s current soon-to-be-victims and headed off for the sea. And then one day he just… showed up, floating off along the coast. It was a miracle that the crew had found him at all. But that didn’t matter. She had put in the work, she had put in the time, and now who was she to pass up her own glorious reward? 

Her crewmates take way too long hoisting him up to the deck. They waste even more time tying him up before they finally throw him right to her feet. He isn’t actually at her feet, because while her crew is still on the deck, she’s taken to perching herself up on the bowsprit, the long wooden stick that juts off from the deck. From here she can get a better vantage point over everything. It’s only fitting that she sit here, up above it all. Art imitates life, after all.

Right now, he’s prone on his side. With all the watery sludge caked on to him, it’s hard to distinguish him from the cuttlefish the other crewmates had dragged aboard the ship with him. He looks just like she remembers. His hair is white, white to such a blinding extent that to her alternian senses it reads as a very wrong and very sickly mutation. She has half a mind to mercy kill him right here, but she knows it would ruin all the fun. He is pale, the palest shade of grey a troll could possibly be, and his build is so thin to match he’s more bone than person. Such an awful looking/smelling oliveblood might not have been ever worth the time of day to someone of Vriska’s self dubbed stature, were they not one Nagito Komeda. 

It’s the eyes that always strike her. They’re as olive as they are glassy and dusted over. Covered halfway by his slumping eyelids he seems almost unaware of his surroundings, like some worthless clown she is unfortunate enough to know. But there’s something else in that gaze. Vriska has lived her entire life on Alternia. In fact, it will be a very long time before she ever comes to a planet not at least in part built off its ferocious culture. She knows enough to respect the seadwelling admirals of the oceans blue-grey. She knows enough to resent the powerful legiscutors, drunk on their legal power. And she knows, oh stars above does she know to fear, fear, fear the terrifying subjugglators. She resents the powers that be, resents them in the way any would-be power hungry upstart was obligated to. But she knew them. She knew their strength; she knew how to know their strength. She could read up anyone top to bottom and front to back to find their strengths, their limits, and through that their weaknesses. She knows how to see behind a troll’s eyes, any troll’s eyes.

What Vriska Serket sees behind Nagito Komeda’s eyes defy all known trollian explanations. 

Nagito never failed to confuse her. Right now he doesn’t seem to be wearing all that much but his usual uniform. Every time she sees him and in every image he’s in he’s always donning those same tattered pants and that same filthy jacket. At first, she read it as a costume all the same as her own. It was a strange persona to don while flarping but she isn’t one to judge, except for when she is, which is effectively all the time. But over time she started to realize that no, he wasn’t wearing some garish ironic costume, these were just his actual clothes. Every day he made the conscious choice to go out into the world like this. And just thinking about him so flagrantly disregarding the most fundamental elements of the beautiful tradition of violence and pillaging of the loosely defined sport she held so near and dear to her heart made her blood boil like nothing else. 

He’s smiling. From where she’s sitting right now, tall and mighty, she can’t make it out too well on his face. But she doesn’t have to. She can read it in his posture, and the oh-so obvious way he seems to be gesturing as best he can towards her. It’s an odd movement, made odder considering the fact that both of his arms are still tied up. It’s a grin so central to him that it takes her out of the moment, actually. She can’t focus on her badass ultra pirate persona, or the struggling worm down below, or how uncomfortable it is to balance on this narrow ledge. She can’t stop her mind from drifting back, back, back to one of her earliest campaigns and one of her earliest defeats. Invariably as with every encounter with the man, she can’t help but recall her first encounter with Nagito.

The first time Vriska Serket met Nagito Komeda, she was heavily underprepared for the encounter. The same could be said about the second, third, fourth, and possibly fifth times. And though she would never admit it to even herself, there could likely not be a single encounter, successful or unsuccessful, with this freak that she could have prepared herself for. 

It was a few hours to dawn then, over the hills of Troll Scotland. Around these islands, the clouded dreadful skies made it hard to tell whether the sun had shown its wretched face yet. Some nights, the clouds were so thick it didn’t matter one way or the other. She was nearing the end of a prolonged, painful campaign along the coasts of Troll Scotland. Needless to say, she was incredibly far from home. Considering the ravenous nature of her lusus, travelling this far was always a risky venture. If she didn’t leave enough victims with her, there was a good chance she would come back to a completely wrecked abode. It was little matter to her, though. What good was conquest, if a little bit of risk wasn’t involved?  
Her red boots trudged through the indistinguishable grey sludge that comprised most of the landscape around these parts. It was a narrow strip of land, a peninsula jutting out from one of the larger islands around these parts. Behind her followed an indiscreet line of slaves that followed her along the way through this more or less entirely solo journey. She wanted to leave them somewhere, but there was no one to leave them with. Her tealbood rival and dearest Scourge Sister, who at the time was still actively campaigning with her, was not accompanying her on this particular journey. At her current piddling levels of epic loot, she couldn’t rely on the stores of her ship to hold those goons either. It wasn’t even really a ship, more of a glorified sailboat. 

Her reports had given word of a dangerous spy of the class ESPIACROONER. They had been jumping left and right sabotaging supply lines and stealing valuables from various players on her own team, which spanned dozens of other highblooded trolls from across the planet. In these days she was completely out of her depth with the scope and effort that went into such a complex FLARP, all the traveling and espionage and inexplicably intimate knowledge of trade negotiations that the proceedings required. In due time these high level campaigns would become second nature to her, but for now she was a scared little grublet far out of her depth. 

She wasn’t even sure what she was here for anyways. The tip said that the Espiacrooner was last seen mucking about somewhere around these parts, but she had been walking for who knows how long into the night and there was no sight of them. 

Her first mistake was sending out scouts ahead. She figured that they would be broken enough after this long in her crew that they’d come back to her when done, but it had been nearly an hour now and there was no sight of them. This, of course, struck a chord with her own impatience, which drew out a sense of unease. This was her second mistake. The third came when she let her eyes focus for too long on the mysterious figure darting in and out of the horizon. It wasn’t for long, just long enough to fall into the trap. 

They came out from the mist. Ten or twelve LEVEL ^% SALES AMBASSAWARRIORS circled around her group. Their light shone low in the weather. She was strong enough to fight them off maybe, just barely, but her troops weren’t. One of the projected enemies slips in behind her lines. It swoops up one of her slaves, a rustblood whose name she had only ever heard as a mumble. The rest of them drew their weapons but it was an effort in futility. One by one they were picked off until Vriska stood alone, outnumbered and de-crewified. No stranger to cheating, Vriska would ordinarily look towards the Flapstractions, the little batlike critters projecting these monsters into existence, but they were impossible to make out in the fog. 

Then a figure started to step out from behind the fog, further up ahead on the path. And then she got her first look at him. He was mangy as all hell, probably from laying down on the path all day. She couldn’t tell if he had been waiting for her specifically or just anyone to come up along here. She wasn’t sure which scenario creeped her out more. 

“ Okay alright already, you got me! If you wanna fight me then fight me, 8ut touch my crew and it’s your funeral, loser.”

A young looking troll boy stepped out from behind not much in particular. Even from the distance he stood at she could tell he was looking directly into her eyes. Her leg betrayed a twitch, but she kept her breath steady. She was still Vriska Serket after all. Though she was inexperienced as all hell, she was not the type to go down without a fight. She was not the type to go down at all. 

“No worries! I woN’t touch them. I just waNted to make sure there wereN’t aNy distractioNs iN the way of our meetiNg. You’re Vriska Serket, right?”

Vriska let out a laugh. It was exaggerated, almost theatrical. “What? I’m Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, co8alt crusader, terror of the seas! I’ve never met a ‘Vriska Serket’ in my life!”

Some of her crew shared some rather nasty aside glances. The boy didn’t even flinch.

“Oh, so are you NOT Vriska Serket?” he asked without a trace of sarcasm.

She rolled her eyes. “Speaking…”

“AmaziNg! Oh, I shouLd probabLy iNtroduce myseLf too: My Name is Nagito Komeda. It’s Nice to meet you. I’ve heard a LittLe about you, but there’s so much more I waNt to LearN!”

She couldn’t help but get a little bit excited at hearing that, which was her fourth mistake. 

“A fan?” she asks.

“You couLd say that.”

The two sat at a standstill for an uncomfortably long pause. Neither knew what to say.

“So what, you want an autograph?”  she asks, breaking the silence.  “Well say something! I don’t have all night, 8uster. I have places to be, heads to 8reak, 8lah 8lah 8luh 8luh. So, like, chop chop!”

He squinted. He studied her as if she were some priceless scroll written in a dead script. He waited a precious moment. And then he spoke. “Amazing! You reaLLy are astouNding, Vriska!”

“I have that effect on people.”

“To thiNk that, eveN at such a cLear disadvaNtage, you wouLd stiLL move with such courage. Such iNcredibLe bravado couLd oNLy be the work of aN uLtimate roLepLayer Like yourseLf!”

“What did you just say to me?”

“You have to have noticed it. These enemies, they’re way too strong for a rookie campaign like this. They don’t even look like they’re from this expansion.”

“... 8ecause they aren’t,” conceded Vriska.

“I had to puLL iN a Lot of favors to work with someoNe who couLd break FLARP Like this, but it was aLL worth it for this meetiNg. You areN’t aN easy persoN to track dowN, Vriska Ser-”

He was midway through another step forward before every muscle in his body betrayed him. He looked on dead ahead (there wasn’t anything else he could do in that moment) to see Vriska with a hand up to her forehead. She shook heavily as all her thoughts constrained to keep this oliveblood in place. The day will come when Vriska’s ability to control the minds of others like clay, will be near invincible. In that moment however, it was all she could do to keep him still. She raised another hand up in the air, miming the movement of Komeda’s own arm as it curved back in until his hand had his neck in a chokehold. WIth as much delicacy as she can, which isn’t much, she psychically chokes him.

“Stop calling me that. My *name* is Marquise Spinneret Mindfang. I’m the terror of the seas. I’m the scourge of landdwellers and seadwellers alike, nightmare to 8oy-skylarks everywhere, and the 8est FLARPer you’ll EVER see. If you wanna dance, dance, if you wanna cheat, we can play it that way too. 8ut I think we 8oth know how that’ll end for you.”

Komeda regained control over his limbs. Air rushed back into his lungs as he took in several deep breaths, not noticing Vriska taking in a few herself. He bent over to choke up some greenish blood that mixes in with the grey dirt on the ground.

“WeLL, I caN’t reject that coNvictioN. If pLayiNg this game is what it takes to get a good coNversatioN out of you, I guess I’LL have to pLay it theN. Is that aLright, MiNdfaNg?”

Vriska reached into her pocket and pulled out a pair of twenty sided dice. “Your funeral, creep. ” She chuckles.  “Mindfang 8races for a 8attle against the interloper. She raises her cutlass to meet her opponent, and then lunches in for a strike!”

“I roLL to dodge.”

Then, it is the present again.

“Don’t touch him,” Vriska spits out from up on her perch. Her crewmates step back from the hostage. She lost that fight, of course. Just as she would lose so many more in the weeks and months and sweeps to come. So many that just challenging him to these games would become a bit of a bad habit, another entry on Vriska’s unending list of bad habits. The first rule of dealing with Nagito Komeda is to never challenge him to a game of chance. Vriska has always known about her chronic issues with luck, but this kid’s good fortune was well and truly unreal. Every dice roll, every coin flip, every single fucking RNG calculation fell into his favor in a way that was obnoxious at best and deeply unnatural at worst. She always figured there must have been some trick, some conniving calculation, some terrible psychic power he exploited. It was the only thing that made sense. And yet…

“Cheater! You’re cheating!” cried out a younger Vriska.

Komeda shrugged. Vriska had just gambled away her then entire slave-crew over to him. She had long since lost the (roleplayed) fight proper, and was resorting to these games of idle chance to try and somehow get at least one win over him. It was that or admit a defeat so utter that she had no point of reference to compare it to. 

“Aw, I guess my uLtimate Luck makes it pretty difficuLt to make these kiNda games iNterestiNg, huh? It’s a shame…”

“Helloooooooo? Asshole? Weren’t you supposed to 8e giving me an interview or whatever and not talking my ass off with all your lameo weenie hogshit?”

“Why wouLd I Need to give aN iNterview?” Komeda responded. Somehow the most infuriating thing about his demeanor was the unnatural calm he always held himself to.  “The hopeLessNess of LosiNg at your owN game, the way your body fights back agaiNst that hopeLessNess teLLs a story more true thaN aNy words couLd. It’s the story of your hope, MiNdfaNg!”

“Oh shut up with that already!”

“But didN’t you waNt me to caLL you MiNdfaNg, MiNdfaNg?”

“Shut up shut up shut uuuuuuuup!” she screamed. Lifting a hand she took control over Komeda’s body once more, and with another flick had him back choking himself again.

“ Oh, good, good!” he said, speaking through choked coughs.

“What?” 

“I- I see it! Right Now iN those eyes I see that shiNiNg spark of hope, the hope that caN oNLy come from misery! Your Need to kiLL me, to strike me dowN aNd rise above my iNcredibLe Luck to become eveN stroNger thaN it, that is your hope!”

“What.”

“That’s what you waNt to do, right? If my pathetic Life couLd be the steppiNg stoNe to your greater shiNiNg success as a fLarper, who am I to stop you? If eveN a bit of LiNt Like me couLd be the kiNdLe to a bLaze Like that…. WouLdN’t it aLL be worth it?”

Vriska takes a deep breath in, returning to the present tense. She’s sunk countless hours into this expedition, and counting planning and scheming and prying into the international gossip mill with all the subtlety of using a sledgehammer to repair a wristwatch those hours quickly turned to seasons on seasons on unending seasons. It’s strange, for a while she could barely get a good image of the mysterious boy who had foiled her FLARP campaigns time and time and time and time and uncountable paradoxical time again. He had become more of an image or a concept than a person. And now here he was, coughing up a lung and a half right on her deck.

“Heeeeeeeey,” she says, leaning forwards a bit from her stoop. Her prisoner coughs up some more water, before looking up at her from his prone position. 

“If you waNted to taLk to me,”  he says, rolling over onto his back to get a better look at her. “You couLd have just asked.”

“Asked how you fucking- you know what? Never mind. I’m not having that conversation. That’s not what matters right now.”

“FiNe by me,” he says, rolling back over onto his side. Without warning, he starts flailing wildly. The crewmates step back, unsure of how to take these wild movements, but from her perspective Vriska sees it clearly- he’s jumping around to reposition himself. Then, when he’s right perpendicular to her, he starts rolling in her direction. He just rolls and rolls as if he intends to either roll off the ship and back into the ocean or roll right up the ramp and take her with him. She sneers and grabs at her trusty cutlass hanging nicely from her belt. In a single clean gesture, she sends it sailing down cleanly until it strikes into the wood, cutting off Komeda’s exit. She shoots him a glare she hopes kills him.

“Aww, you’re No fuN,” he whines. He rolls back to his earlier position, even flailing a little to go back to his decidedly worse original position. “WeLL, I guess you fouNd me. Were you LookiNg for somethiNg?”

Vriska scoffs, trying to laugh off the past few minutes/interactions/perigrees with a single hair flip. 

“Pffft, what? Just trying to catch up with an old friend, what’s wrong with that?”

“Vriska, I appreciate your humor, but I didN’t come here just to be toLd Lies.”

Her eyes narrow. “You didn’t come here at all, moron. You got captured 8y my guys like some chump!”

He looks at the bindings as if discovering them for the first time.  “WeLL, I guess I caN’t argue with that. So, what did you briNg me aLL the way over here to teLL me?”

Paradox Space plays upon certain rules. Patterns of behavior that play into certain rhythms, like a catchy song that one just can’t get out of their head. That which has happened is that which will happen again. Perhaps it is for that reason that Vriska’s next words are identical to the words Komaeda said on that cold, cloudied day that they had first met. 

“I waNt to give you aN offer,” Komeda said.

“An offer?” Vriska responded, on the verge of screaming until her voice blew out. Her entire crew was watching her get her troll ass handed to her by some weirdo nobody. It was beyond humiliating. She got back to her feet and pretended to dust some of the path’s mud off her pants. “What kind of offer?”

“EveN if your gambLiNg skiLLs work rather poorLy iN the face of my uLtimate Luck, I caN see your skiLL at pLay aLready. UsiNg your psychic abiLities to coNtroL your crew whiLe I was distracted with our battLe, theN usiNg them to physicaLLy destroy the FLarpstractioNs- just iNcredibLe preseNce of miNd!”

Vriska froze up. “You saw all of that.”

“Of course! How couLd I be pushed to miss such aN iNcredibLe dispLay of uLtimate taLeNt from Miss MiNdfaNg herseLf?”

“Whatever! You lost your 8argaining chips, this little interview is over. Come on nerds, let’s 8ounce.”

“But you didN’t eveN get to hear my offer!”

“Then get to your point already!”

He outstretched a hand.  “Come with me, MiNdfaNg. Together, we caN be the uLtimate hope that this worLd Needs!”

Wind rushed through his hair. The world stopped for a moment.

“You're serious?”

“As serious as I’LL ever be.”

She didn’t know what to say. Her feelings danced about on her face as it contorted from shock, to intrigue, to disgust, to finally a deep heavy bemusement. It boiled in her gut, running up through her throat before flying out of her mouth as she vomited up a hearty giggle that would soon become a full on belly laugh. She couldn’t help it. She laughed as if her life depended on it, as if little giggles bubbled up under her skin like boils stinging up and down her arms. She laughed as if there was nothing in all the stars more ridiculous than the words that had slipped through Komeda’s lips in that singular moment. And when she could laugh no longer, she laughed again. Vriska shouted out to the coasts, to the waterfront on either side of the strip. She shouted out to the heavens, though they gave no answer. Off to the side, her crew shared a few nervous chuckles. None of them quite got the joke. Komeda didn’t either.

“Is that a yes?” he asked.

“Why would Marquise Mindfang, future ruler of the seas, ever team up with some slimy lowlife low8looded creep like you? Congrats, you caught my worthless spider88 crew and you 8eat a few pro8a8ly rigged dice games, so what? You still aren’t even close to 8eing in my league.”

“Be that as it may, I-”

“I will never, ever join forces with you.”

Back in the present, Vriska makes her case. “Come with me, Komeda. You’re strong, aren’t you? Could you imagine the games we could win if we were on the same team? We could run this shit8ag planet!”

“Huh?” Komeda responds. His voice cracks for a moment, the most vulnerable she’s ever heard him. Vriska jumps off the perch. She seems to glide suspended in the air, fairylike, as she floats down to him. He can do nothing else but look up towards her, standing proud and tall on her vessel. 

“What, you don’t trust me?”

“It aLL seems a LittLe suddeN. This isN’t a side of you I see ofteN.”

She grins. “Maybe not. I guess… I guess I just see a little 8it of me in you. I could recognize that hunger in your eyes from a thousand miles away.” says Vriska, in the now. She takes another step forward. “You? Me? We’re too good for this dirt8all. Why waste all this time in the slow lane when the fast lane’s right there?”

Vriska’s gaze drifts to her robotic left arm. “I’ve had some… set8acks in recent memory.. Shakeups. Whatever you wanna call them. I’ve had some time to get a new perspective on things. 8ut that’s just the way things are for people and you and me, isn’t it? The world gives us so much shit, and we throw it all right 8ack in their sorry little faces.”

She was too young to understand this back then. That need to find someone on your own level, someone who could push you forward. She took it for granted for so long, until she lost it. Of course she didn’t get his words, he might as well have been speaking a different language. When Komaeda said his part to her that day on the isles of Troll Scotland, she couldn’t help but reject it on impulse. That didn’t stop him from trying. 

“W-what are you getting at?” responded the younger Vriska.

“To be hoNest, MiNdfaNg, wheN I heard about your expLoits I couLdN’t beLieve them. The dariNg escapades, aLL those improbabLe victories, you’re oNe of the most taLeNted FLARPers to pLay the game.That taLeNt, that poteNtiaL, doesN’t it just fiLL you with hope? For as LoNg as I caN remember, I guess I’ve aLways beeN drawN to those of great taLeNt. To those worthy of beiNg caLLed, ‘ULtimate’. I’ve devoted my eNtire Life to that hope, to seekiNg it out, cuLtivatiNg it, aNd puttiNg it to use tryiNg to fix this brokeN worLd!”

“Those worthy?” 

“PeopLe Like us, Vriska, the taLeNted, the ULtimates!” Komeda answered. Vriska wanted to step back, but her legs wouldn’t budge any further. “The rest of this worLd, it cLaims it cuLtivates taLeNt but aLL it cuLtivates is brutaLity. ENdLess wars oN eNdLess stars, bLoodshed, sweeps upoN sweeps of hatred. This pLace, this empire, these peopLe… they reject the hope they areN’t stroNg eNough to bear! So it faLLs upoN us to briNg about that chaNge. Come oN, areN’t you tired of pLayiNg pirate aLL the time?”

“I do not play pirate!” Vriska lashed back at him. There remained some part of her fighting like a crazed cornered beast. She took a step to run at him. There was something caught on her foot, and that something would send her stumbling to the ground, helpless to do anything but look up at Komeda standing tall and proud on his dirt.

“MiNdfaN- No,  _ Vriska _ . You kNow you’re capabLe of so much more thaN this.”

Vriska didn’t understand Komaeda’s offer then. She does now. 

“Join me,” Vriska says in the present. He doesn’t bother looking up anymore.

“And we can be part of some thiNg so much greater.”

It is in this way that, at two disparate points in history, Komeda and Vriska both extend their hands towards their other. The waves crash and cackle. The winds blow into each other. The sound cracks against the rocks and echoes into the distance across time. It is, of course, in these simultaneous coincidental circuities that paradox space trades and deals. 

“... is that what you thiNk I am?” Komeda says in the present, the first to break the silence.

“It’s what I know you are. At the end of the day, you’re a thief, aren’t you? Just like me. How many lives have you stolen away? How many hearts have you crushed just to survive? How many heads are you gonna 8reak 8efore you realize this is how you’re always going to 8e?”

“Just a thief, huh?” he responds. 

“Did you think you could ever 8e anything else? Komeda, I can smell the 8lood on you. If you haven’t noticed, that kinda stink doesn’t come out in the wash,” continues Vriska. 

The other slaves look pensively between each other. Vriska stands over her rival, one of many. And like these other many, he too in time now lies powerless at her feet. His face is twisted in some pained consternation. Her words have already sunken grip into his mind. He doesn’t have an answer. How could he? The venom, her venom, has already seeped into his blood. 

“So what do you say,  _partner_?”

“That’s sad,” Komeda says.

“What’s sad?”

“Are those reaLLy the Limits of your determiNatioN?”

“What’s wrong with that?” Vriska answers.

“ALL this effort, aLL this taLeNt, wasted Like this…. There’s No hope iN that.”

He’s squirming on the ground now. It’s pathetic, really.

“If you’re gonna be such a little 8itch 8oy about it, here’s my second offer. Join my team, or I leave you like this for the rest of the trip and feed you to my lucius when I get home. Maybe that’ll jog your worm 8rain a 8it.”

Something like a growl rises up from Komeda. There’s a whirl of frantic movement behind his back. Then, in a single motion, he pushes up from the deck with his legs, kicking himself upright as his arms slink out of the bindings, now just a loose assortment of broken strings from the troll houdini act he’d been working on during Vriska’s monologue. The pirate roleplayer nearly jumps back, pulling her cutlass at her feet from the wood and training it on his position.

“How’d you-”

“Vriska, was this reaLLy aLL you had to say?”

Vriska looks around at her dumbfounded crewmates. “Well? Grab him!”

Komeda remains stone faced as the other trolls turned slaves turned sailors cautiously approach him. He doesn’t move as two close in on him. One, a rustblood with wild, anxious eyes holding a pair of metal handcuffs from the ship’s holds them up, gesturing to the other troll. The other grabs his left arm, moving it on top of the bottom halves of one of the rings as the first clicks the top half into place above it, then the same for the right arm. As the last cuff clicks into place, Vriska can do nothing but stare her burning eyes into Komeda’s endless pale. The two subordinates step back, barely able to stand in his presence. It’s hard enough to stay standing even at their distance from the young troll. It is as if his very skin radiates this aura of compressed, condensed malice, all of it directed purely towards their captain, Vriska Serket. 

“Vriska,” Komeda speaks. Every word is slow, precice, as if his voice itself is the only thing holding back the torrent of spite hiding behind his teeth. “Do you remember what I toLd you, the first time we met?”

Vriska grits her teeth. “Jog my memory.”

“I doN’t have time to waste pLayiNg games,” Komeda says. “You’re oNe of the most iNterestiNg peopLe I’ve ever met Ms. Serket, but I’m Not goiNg to pLay to your tuNe aNymore. ANd I doN’t have to.”

“And do you remem8er what I said to that?”

Komeda doesn’t respond.

“Shove it up your own ass.”

A bird flies overhead, its squawking just barely audible over the roar of the waters. Smog pours over the horizon. 

“So this is your uLtimatum?” Komeda finally asks.

“Get on the winners’ team or join the losers’. Either way you’re coming with me.”

_Ding. Ding. Ding ding ding._

“What the hell is that…”  Vriska mumbles to herself, before her head shoots over to her computer, currently bringing up a radar chart. It’s pinging off like crazy. She holds it up as one of her underlings crosses over to her. “Hey, you- 8andana over there, what is this shit?”

_Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding._

Vriska is a well known seafarer. She knows what this means. Bandana-over-there also knows, though that’s more from contextual clues than anything else. But they lean over her shoulder anyways and glance over the screens as if this will in any way change things.

_Dingdingdingdingdingdingdingding._

“This_is- _this is-_captain,_you_know_this,_this_is-”

“Well?” 

“That wouLdN’t happeN to be aN approachiNg submerged ship comiNg iN hot oN our positioN, wouLd it?”  Komeda asks.  “I have a LittLe bit of experieNce with saiLiNg software.”

“Wow, it is! And you know what else?” Vriska asks.

She doesn’t give him a chance to answer. Her hand raises and he loses control over his extremities. His knees buckle out from under him as he collapses to the floor. He gets up on his knees for a second, only to slam his own head back into the wood, again and again and again and again.

_Bam bam bam bam bam._

_Dindindindindindindindindingggg_

“You. 8ROUGHT. This. Didn’t you? You ALWAYS-”

She flings her hand to the side, and there Komeda goes, bashing his skull against the side hull. Her dominance over her mind powers have gotten stronger since they’d last met, exponentially. She couldn’t believe how difficult she had once found it. She storms over to his position and hoists him by his collar. Olive blood pools up below his bruises, one stream breaking the surface and trickling down his face. 

“How! How! How do you always find the right places, the right times… the planning it’d take, the coordination you’d need, I- I-”

“Do you thiNk-”  Komeda chokes out. “SomeoNe as- worthLess as me- couLd orchestrate somethiNg Like this?”

On cue, the wood below their feet starts breaking up, as a miniature submarine piloted by an unbelievably furious seadweller crashes up through it. The crew is immediately split down the middle. She feels Komeda slip out of her psychic grip too late as he disappears over the edge into the grey waters below. He’s out of sight before the cuffs hit the ground. 

The move is on every level a strategic blunder. No other word describes the incompetence needed to sacrifice this many lives, trash a vessel, and even risk a commander’s own health simply to destroy another captain’s ship. To think anyone, nevermind an experienced seafarer, would even consider it would be a comedy of the highest degree, a farce among farces. But it is not easy to disregard the power in a flaming unrequited ire, the kind that builds over sweeps upon sweeps. It is the sort of power that right now flames the fires that course through the great Dualscar's violet veins. 

As the ship makes its forceful surfacing, what invaders aren’t completely incapacitated by the collision jump out the soon-to-be sinking submarine to deal with what remains of Vriska’s crew. Through the chaos she can make out some words, curses, maybe, aimed in her direction. She can’t be arsed to engage with this right now, though. She slips under two entangled combatants, pushes down a third as she takes a running leap off the edge. This petty slapfight is beneath her. The only thing she can think about is how much she wants to run her fist through the wormy slimy olive green motherfucker who thought he could get one up over Vriska Serket and live to tell the tale. Again. She does, however, have the energy to deliver one well timed midair “FUCK OFF, AMPORA” before she slips beneath the deck. 

Vriska hits the waters hard and cold. The depths are so murky as to be totally opaque, in part because of the pollution from the factories in part from the fight going on above. Explosions, red and yellow and orange, flash overhead. Their sound comes out watery and muffled to her ears. The whole affair will most likely go down as a major loss in this rather drawn out and incredibly self-important FLARP campaign, but neither Vriska nor the seadweller would be around to reap the consequences. And, not too long from today, no one else on their planet would be either. None of this is what matters at the moment, however. Vriska squints through the dark waters that sting her eyes. With how muddled everything looks, she can’t lock in on anything. She ducks as a large bit of debris falls in and nearly strikes her dead on the head. The cobaltblood immediately resurfaces, trying to get a better visual on the scene. There’s no sight of the target.

Just then, there’s a splash on the surface. There’s some energy beyond her own strength that propels her arms to push forward in its direction, just a little bit closer. She takes a stroke, then another. Another stroke, and yet again another. The screams of young trolls fill the air as the rez haze plays off against the coming dawn. She’s running out of time. She takes another push forward. 

She needs this, more than she needs air.

How their first fight played out in the end is of no pertinence. The timeline always syncs up the same way. She fights, he taunts, he escapes somehow. She fights, he taunts, she loses. Which is, to Vriska’s understanding, absolutely bananas, because Vriska Serket doesn’t lose. Ever. But somehow, this air, this _luck_ , because it’s always luck with this kid, that clings to Komeda’s skin like a putrid perfume, always protects him. This luck, the luck Vriska’s spent her entire life clawing and scratching to grasp hold of, that’s only just started to tip towards her own favor, comes so effortlessly to him that “cheating” is the only word that pays it justice. What else could she call something so senseless, so unfair? And he has the nerve to call her potential wasted? And he has the _audacity_ to, to…

She doesn’t know how far or for how long she’s been swimming for, or even in what direction. After some point she loses herself in the waves, staying afloat perhaps by pure fortune alone. When she finally washes up on the sands of some unknown distant shore, she’s so disoriented she can’t be bothered to know where she is. 

She sees him first- a weak, lithe, grayish whitish greenish figure in tattered rags, limp on the beach. Her breathing is hoarse, she soon realizes. There’s some gag about horses that could be made here, but by the time far in the future it would become relevant to her own life, this will be a memory she has long blotted out of her mind. Which is not to say that the next few moments won’t leave an irrevocable stain of their own on her psyche.

Vriska takes her first ragged step onto land. Her feet sink into the sand, her shoes lost somewhere in the waters. She turns back for a second, seeing the burning wreckage of her ship as a glimmering pile of lit dots in the distance. She’s lost everything today to this. To _him_. Her hate pulls her forward to another step. Another. Another. And yet another still, until she notices that pile of gray on the ground is dragging itself along the sands rather quickly. 

She’s limping up on him as he stumbles to his feet. She spits out what she thinks is some witty jab or retort but it comes out sounding more like a half-murmured spattering of hisses and curses in tongues she did not speak. For a second she considers mind controlling him into snapping his own neck right then and there but she decides against it. She needs something rawer, something realer. A sword, her cutlass, materializes in her hand as a stray blue die, of her own magical octet, falls to the ground and rolls entirely in her favor. 

She’s going to kill him. She’s going to kill him. She’s going to-

“Stop.” Komeda’s voice creaks out from his burnt out lungs.

“I’ll kill you, I’ll…”

“Vriska, stop. It’s over,” he croaks out.  “Your kNees are shot. You caN’t keep goiNg Like this.”

“You- you took, you took-”

“There’s NothiNg I took that you didN’t gambLe away.”

In the light right here, Komeda doesn’t look ragged, or waterlogged, or half dead. At least, any more than he did on a usual basis. In this light, he looks confident, capable, and above all else he looks far stronger than anything she can muster right now. It’s as if on cue that all the exhaustion and burnout that this days-on-end hunt has pushed onto her impacts her body. It hits her like a train, nearly sending her to her knees. But she persists. 

“I’ll kill you.”

“What do you waNt? What do you expect?? You waNt to wiN? Sure, fiNe, you wiN! You did it! I thought you were worthLess, iNcapabLe of hope, but Now I reaLize you’re somethiNg eveN Lower thaN that. This obsessioN, this seNseLess seLfish hatred… it’s NothiNg but despair iNcarNate.”

“You’re- it’s not, fair it’s-” 

She’s limping closer.

“You see it too, caN’t you? IN the skies above, iN the stars, this whoLe empire is sick aNd rotteN with despair. It siNks uNder my skiN, it siNks iNto my bLood, there’s _No_ chaNce for aNythiNg good here! Is there aNy hope that caN spriNg from a barreN fieLd? You caN feeL it, right? The rumors, the whispers, the fear, this whoLe worLd is teeteriNg oN the briNk of coLLapse aNd aLL you caN thiNk about is yourseLf!”

“I’ll kill you, I’ll-”

He’s given up on running. She is close enough that she can feel his salty breath on the tip of her nose.

“How does it feeL, Vriska Serket? How does it feeL kNowiNg you’LL Live to see the eNd of the-”

She runs her sword right through him, piercing his heart instantly. Ribs, bone, and muscle all rupture with one fell swoop. It isn’t an instant blow, his brain has a second to react. Not that his face lights up with pain, quite the opposite actually. On his lips read a crazed, wild grin as he almost falls forward on top of her, before stumbling backwards. She catches a chance glimpse into his eyes, and sees into oblivion just as his heart gives out. He coughs up blood. The wound is mortal, but life remains in his limbs for just a little while longer. Trolls are a notoriously resilient race, able to endure huge amounts of immoderate violence. They have a tendency to cling to life even past the point of death. 

“What I WANTED to do,” Vriska says, her own blue blood pooling in her throat, “was INVITE you to play a fucking VIDEO GAME with me and some of my lameo friends, 8ecause I thought you’d 8e 8etter to have on my team than the losers they wanted to stick me with, but CLEARLY you aren’t fucking mature enough for that!!!!!!!!”

She takes huge, raw, irregular breaths in and out as sweat and saltwater make amends and mingle on her brow. Every breath she takes in feels like sawdust being forced down her throat. It hurts to stand almost as much as it does to exist. But… Komeda is on the ground, bleeding out his last pool of blood. So there’s a small victory in all of this. 

And then Komaeda throws up one final wild look directly into her eyes.

“Who wouLd  _ ever _ waNt to pLay a game with someoNe Like you?”

And then Nagito Komeda collapses to the ground face first, never to rise again.

“.... well fuck you too pal.”

And then Vriska Serket collapses face first to the ground, a small pool of cobalt blood flowing out from her mouth.

“1 S3R1OUSLY C4NT B3L13V3 YOU 4CTU4LLY TR4CK3D H1M DOWN. 1 THOUGHT H3 W4S SUPPOS3D TO B3, L1K3, UNTR4C34BL3.”

She can barely see her savior, but she knows that voice rather well. Terezi Pyrope reaches down a hand with which Vriska pulls herself up to some rather unstable footing. Her limbs are bony as all hell, but her frame carries a strength to it that Vriska finds comforting. Or, well, at least she finds it secure. To pull herself up with. On the sand. Right here. 

“4ND B3FOR3 1 FORG3T 1 H4V3 TO NOT3 TH4T YOU SOM3HOW DR4GG3D 3R1D4N 1NTO TH1S SH1T TOO? SO W3 4LMOST LOST TWO PL4Y3RS TOD4Y, GOOD TO KNOW. SOLLUX 1S GO1NG TO K1LL YOU WH3N H3 F1NDS OUT.”

“He won’t, promise!” Vriska says, before she vomits up some more blood.  “God, how much 8lood do I have in me?”

“1 GU3SS W3’LL F1ND OUT.”

Vriska sheepishly looks up to Terezi. “You wouldn’t happen to have a spare ship on you, right? From the old days?”

“VR1SK4 1F WH4T SOLLUX S4YS 1S R1GHT L1T3R4LLY NON3 OF TH1S 1S GO1NG TO M4TT3R 1N 4 F3W D4YS.”

“Oh, don’t give me that talk, you know you miss me.”

“VR1SK4 1F YOU W3R3NT MY T34MM4T3 1 WOULD H4V3 L3T YOU D13 H3R3 YOU KNOW. 1 SHOULD H4V3.”

“Well that’s not 8eing a fair sport.”

“WH3N H4V3 W3 3V3R B33N F41R SPORTS VR1SK4.”

“Well there was that one time I… ah well, nevermind.”

Terezi is functionally dragging Vriska’s limp body to her own vessel, parked along the waters. It’ll be a day or so before they get back, maybe longer for Terezi to return, but they’ll manage. Vriska does wonder how Terezi’s managed to actually sail all her way here despite being literally blind. She really can’t get a read on that girl. 

“1 H4D TO PULL 4 LOT OF F4VORS TO F1ND YOU, YOU KNOW”

“It’s just like you said- none of this is going to matter in a few days anyways, right?”

“1 C4NT 1M4G1N3 WH4T ST4T3 YOULL B3 1N TO PL4Y SOLLUXS G4M3 1N BUT WH4T3V3R, NOT MY PROBL3M”

Vriska looks out to the clouds. Soon, dawn will break and they’ll have to barricade inside whatever Terezi sailed over here with, to stay safe from the morning’s blinding rays.

“Hey, Terezi?”

“WH4T?”

“You  _ do _ like playing games with me, right? At the end of the day, despite all the murders, 8ackstabings, 8etrayals, 8eing on the same team was  _ fun _ , right?” 

Terezi stops walking. The chill of the air rustles through them both.

“NO, VR1SK4. 1T R34LLY, R34LLY W4SN’T”

  
  



End file.
